modern history
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Relics of Hiroshima – Lessons on the 80th Anniversary
MA student Ruth Weber reflects on one of the most moving collections held in the archives at the University of Reading: tile fragments gathered from the ruins of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, 6 August 1945. Tiles. What comes… Continue reading
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‘Bells, Flags – and Bathing Costumes – in Big Procession’: British Street Parties
PhD student Fiona Lane shares some of her own research in the aftermath of the VE80 celebrations, focusing on very different types of street parties: those hosted by rent strikers in the 1930s. ‘It will be like Coronation Day again!’,… Continue reading
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Black History Month 2024: Black Musical Cultures Beyond Borders, Part 2 – Transatlantic Exchanges
In the second of our two Black History Month blogs, Dr Benjamin Bland (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of History) reflects on the importance of transatlantic exchanges and identities to the history of Black musical cultures in the… Continue reading
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The 1939 Municipal Rent strikes in England. When women held their communities together, by Fiona Lane
‘The idea of living in a neighbourhood…appears virtually to have no connection with any responsibility for its good government in the mind of the average housewife.’[1] The theme of ‘inspire inclusion’ for Women’s History Month is a welcome opportunity to… Continue reading
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May Hobbs: Organising the Nightcleaners, by Amy Longmuir
May Hobbs was born in Hoxton, East London in 1938. Like many other working class women, by the 1960s she found work as a nightcleaner in the ever-increasing number of high-rise office blocks in central London. Much of this work… Continue reading
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